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It’s a shame that P.L. Travers never got to see Cameron Mackintosh’s stage musical version of Mary Poppins, because it probably would have gladdened her complex, flinty heart.

The new film Saving Mr. Banks deals with how Walt Disney convinced Travers to let him make a movie out of her beloved series of books about the magical nanny with the capacity to change people’s lives.

But though Mary Poppins got made, it wasn’t exactly a happily ever after.

The entente between Disney and Travers blew apart at the film’s 1964 premiere, which Travers had to bully her way into. When she started to give Disney her notes on what still needed fixing in the movie, he turned to her and said, “Pamela, that ship has sailed,” and they never spoke again.

Travers got her revenge when she realized Disney had not secured the stage rights to her story. She wrote into her will that no one connected with the movie was to have anything to do with the stage version and that any authors who did adapt it for the stage would have to be British.

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That’s where Mackintosh comes in.

Ever since he saw the 1964 movie, he knew he wanted to put it on the stage, he told the Star in a 2006 interview, just before his musical version opened on Broadway.

He discovered that “for some inexplicable reason, Disney never tied up the stage rights to the original books by Pamela Lyndon Travers and since she wasn’t fond of the film version, she held on to them tightly.”

Mackintosh pursued Travers for years and finally met her in 1994, when she was 93.

“She interviewed me,” is how he describes the meeting. “She wanted to find out how much I wanted to do it and how well I really knew the books.”

Mackintosh met one qualification right off the bat. He is very British, as were the authors (Julian Fellowes, George Stiles and Anthony Drewe) who collaborated with him on the stage adaptation.

But more importantly, Mackintosh told Travers that he felt that “the redemption of the children’s father, Mr. Banks, was what really lay at the heart of the story.”

Always a skilled theatrical archer, Mackintosh hit a bull’s-eye with that one. As Saving Mr. Banks reveals, Travers’ father was a wistful failed banker who drifted into alcoholism and died when she was only 7. Her whole life was spent looking for “a Mr. Banks” to fill in the gaps in her psyche.

The movie Mary Poppins made gestures in that direction. One of its most moving scenes is David Tomlinson’s Mr. Banks singing about how “a man has dreams of walking with giants,” a dream he never thinks he’ll realize.

But Disney was more interested in creating a glorious family fantasy, not a probing psychological study, and the moments of serious depth in the film are few and far between.

Despite that, there’s a scene in Saving Mr. Banks where Tom Hanks’ Disney and Emma Thompson’s Travers cut to the heart of the story.

After Disney jeeringly calls Travers “the woman who sent a nanny with a flying umbrella to save the children,” she snaps back, “You think Mary Poppins came to save the children? Oh dear.”

Eventually, Disney realizes that Poppins was sent by Travers “to save the father, your father.”

As for Mackintosh, he delivered on his promise to Travers that the musical would dig deeper into the story of how the Banks family turns from a dysfunctional group of sad outliers into a harmonious organism.

They even added a number for the mother, “Being Mrs. Banks,” which increases the stature of the once-sad Mr. Banks in his wife’s eyes.

It’s a no-brainer that a viewing of the film Mary Poppins is a wonderful addition to seeing Saving Mr. Banks. And barring a visit to the stage musical, which isn’t playing at the moment, giving a listen to the original cast recording would provide the ideal bookend, making it a “practically perfect” P.L. Travers experience.

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